Tao‘s HotPot & Shabu

First the design of this restaurant is modern and fresh. They keep the restaurant spotless. The staff and owner are extremely helpful and super friendly. The food is delicious and hotpot is quickly one of my favorite meals. The AYCE is the sweet spot and the Kobe is to die for. 10/10 highly recommend!!

Not sure if anyone has been hoping for a hot pot/shabu place to open up around here, but I was and I’m glad Tao’s Hot Pot and Shabu opened up in Folsom!
If you have never tried this type of food, you pick from a selection of soup bases, then pick your meats/veggies/carbs etc., boil then eat. Basically fondue but not using cheese. They also offer hot food items, such as chicken wings, potstickers, etc.
If you can handle spicy then I would recommend trying the spicy soup base, unfortunately I can’t handle heat. The owner is from the hot pot capital of China (ChongQing) so I would imagine the spicy soup base to be quite good.
Price is comparable to other ayce hot pot/shabu places, and there are lots of specials during the week (50% off alcohol and free soft drink), I also did the lobster tail add on ($12), so worth it! You can tell it’s really fresh and it was tasty.
For my protein I just stuck to beef, both kinds were really good. I got the miso soup base and it was well flavored and seasoned. I’m a big fan of their house special dipping sauce, and stuck to using that.
The homemade shrimp balls is also great, and a must order. The shrimp came peeled and deveined, which was nice.
To my pleasant surprise they offer yuki no bosha (cabin in the snow) sake. A rarer delicious sake I usually find at fancier establishments. At 50% I just had to haha!
I’ll be back to try the tomato soup base soon!
They do get busy on the weekends so plan ahead.
This would be great for those heading to/from Tahoe as well. Nom nom!

The pictures posted by other reviewers look very nice, so I decided to try this place with my friends. Saw couple bad reviews about the service so I was nervous about getting the same. Surprisingly, it was not bad at all. We went there and sit down about 8:15pm. Per the menu, each table was supposed to order 3 meats, 2 sides, 2 appetizers at one time (menu didn’t limit # of rounds). The last call was at 8:30pm, so we were nervous that the kitchen will shutdown and we didn’t have enough food. However, the servers helped us a lot to ensure we get enough food we wanted and the plates in every round still looked descent and full. The meat was great and others sides were well thought & delicious as well. The owner also came out and asked about how’s the food, how’s the service, and anything that they can improve. Rarely had such an experience that Owner went out and talk to each table to take advices and get better. It seems that it is their first restaurant and they want to provide the excellent service to the customers. Overall, it was a great experience and I would recommend this place to my friends and family.